Stormfront_NA

What you all think?

I have alts in a variety of servers so I can play with different groups of friends or gaming atmospheres. While I am very comfrotable with the Champions Server, was thinking how about have a neutral server, where folks from any server could virtually move their character to adventure with other players from other servers.

Let me expand a little bit on the concept...

Say I enter my main Stormfront from Champions into a special portal, kinda like its already done on FBZ. This portal does not transfer my main from Champions to this new Universal server, I am thinking of this as more along the lines of an instance which is handled by a dedicated server.

Once in this "server" instance, my name would show as Stormfront-Ch (Champions), and game wise the environment would work just the same as if I was still at Champions. A player from say Virtue, wants to join me in a Overlord Hunt, and his name in Virtue is Mantis, so in the virtual server; his name would be Mantis-Vi (Virtue).

Once we both are in the same server albeit instanced, we could do whatever players do in the game.

Now at the end of the day, when I shut my game off, just as if I was in a regular instanced mission, my character leaves the virtual/instanced server and next day when I log Stormfront, she will be at the entrance portal in champions, just like it would have occurred have tyou left the game while inside an instanced mission.

I would think a TF done at an instanced location, would keep you in the instanced situation; this would be required in the case you get disconnected during a TF.

I think, also it would be fun to have league like PvP challenges across Servers, and other grand scale cooperative events.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm..

In general you are out of luck, the Epic AT is horribly pidgeon holed. When solo your abilities are so weak, its more annoying to fight with a PB than a Defender. In groups your mediocity decreases with the size of the group, but even in a full group your damage potential is a joke.

Grouping can be an issue, for unlike the red epics who provides a boost to the group, the BP yields nothing to the group and instead of being a boost they create added mobs for the group to suffer through.

I have spent lots of influence IO slotting up my PB, she is very survivable, but the fighting with her is simply boring for they do too low damge. My hardest hitting blast has very strong Knock Back which annoys the living daylights out of PBAOE using players, for I do a great service to the enemy by dispersing them.

Frankly, PBs are not worth playing, I made mine as a status symbol and be able to say I have one. But I seldom ever play it, in fact since I filled all my slots in Champions, I paid to transfer it to another server to never be played again.

Stormy

Mmm...

I would not believe "Hasten" is a most, but it sure is nice to have. I subscribe to the speed pool for al my alts for the Super Speed power mainly, for Super Speed when combined with a Celerity +Stealth: Affords me excellent stealth abilities.

Hasten is actually very valuable when alts are low leveled and do not have many attacks to begin with, so recycle times could be very important during a fight. I do feel the contribution of Hasten decreases as you gain in levels and obtain more attack powers.

The value of Hasten is also very much AT dependent and build or mode of play, I would not pass on Hasten for my Controllers, I want my Mez abilities to recycle as quickly as possible for instance.

With regards to Fly, I build concept characters, I feel Fly is an elegant power, and truly iconic of a super type, no self respecting hero can't fly type of mentallity. While there are many awesome heroes out there that can't fly, somehow I stand more in awe at thsoe who can fly. So as a rule, all my alts fly, but that is a personal preference. On the other hand, if I am a support AT, you want the Fly pool, particular the "Hover" power. Why Hover? As a support AT, I have no unconditional protections, my survival merely consists of not being hit or affected by mez, because essentially I am pretty helpless if caught flat-footed. I have experienced that having capped defenses to be a good way to survive encounters, especially the ever increasing "spawned on your face" ambushes. The difficulty with support alts and defense, is that they only have one or two at best powers that provides defense, so IO setting them against all 3 positionals is extremly hard if not down right impossible. I found that achieving 45% Range and 30% AOE defense is achievable, but not much can be done for melee. Thus enter "Hover" if I operate above enough to take me out of melee range, I don't have to worry much about melee defense (unless the mob flies at me, but no defense is really perfect). Hover has another great redeeming feature, it can be acquired atr level 6 and you can place in it a Karmas Knock Back Protection! A truly important IO for support ATs once more. Obviously Hover is not that valuable for the Melee ATs.

Why I don't use Jump, despite it has awesome pool powers such as Acrobatics? I just don't like to go jumping around, I am a "theme" player and can't see my ladies jumping around like the "Hulk", its just too crude or unsophisticated. Also the MAG protection afforded by Acrobatics is too low to really afford reliable protection against mez powers, a Boss MAG 3 hold will still put you down first try, since the MAg 2 protection from Acrobatics is too low. The knock back protection is a MAG 3 which is still too low, but it all adds. I simply bite the bullet and buy a Karma and place it on Hover, buy 2 x Blessing of the Zephyrs and place them on Super Speed and Flight for an accumulated MAG 12 KBP achieved by level 16. This does make my alt's build cost noticeably increase, but the peace of mind that I can take KBP as good as any tank is quite comforting.

Hugs

Stormfront

Mmm..

There are actual a few reasons beyond your control for it to be happening...

Usually there is the ambush, totally immune to the restrictions of stealth. So Stealth is absolutely no protection against being attacked.

So your second line of defense is not being very threatening or scary, but even that does not work either, its only an illusion of safety, and this is why:

The ambush will not send all of its members to the same player or target, it tends to evenly distribute the attackers among the players.

So if an ambush spawns 24 mobs, such as you could see in an ITF, that would result with 3 mobs assigned to each player, regardless of how scary you are.

Now the level of scariness does drive what is first allocated to attack whom. Typically if you have an EB, 4 Bosses, 8 LTs, and 16 Minions, the first assignment the EB would go to the highest threat level player, usually a taunting tank. Now here comes something neat and semi nice! A number of mobs from an ambush will go first towards the taunting tank up to his cap before going to another player, say 20. So from my example of the 29 mobs, the first 20 toughest mobs will go to the tank, unless the tank is already engaging the normal non-ambush mobs, wish is very typical. For illustration sakes, say when the ambush hits, the tank has 10 opponents on her, then 10 of the 28 ambush mobs goes after the tank, and the remaining 18 mobs are evenly distributed among the other players; unless there is a second taunting tank! Who would garner a fair share of the left overs. Assuming there is not a second taunting tank, then 18/7=2 (14)with 4 left over mobs; thus all players will be attacked by 2 mobs each, except the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th highest scary players who would each pick one of the 4 stragglers. If you happen to have a non taunting tank, only using their attacks inherent, they can not hold on to 20, they will be lucky to hold on to 10, so more mobs will be available to be distributed among the remaining players.

So when the ambush hits, it does not matter if you are invisible and have not even done a thing, there will 2 or 3 mobs who has your name and address.

Now what happens when you AOE, even after a tank has allegedly their aggroe? To begin with, very few tanks today actually taunt, they depend on their inherent to do it for them. While somewhat effective, its kinda weak, and very easy to steal aggroe away from them. So if the tank had a weak 20 mob aggroe taunt, and you do say a flashfire, when the effect if the flashfire expire, and if the tank/group has not killed any of them, all 20 will come after you, less those the tank can keep taunted to herself, essentially 10; thus there will be 10 very angry mobs of all colors and sizes wanting a piece of you, and just you!

My advice to you would be to encourage the group to avoid huge herding of mob groups, if the suspicion of an ambush is present. The reason for a small groups at a time, with an ambush over your head, is that there will be less mobs on the tank, and thus the more ambush mobs the tank can attract. If you have hearded a huge group, potentially the tank's allotment of 20 could already be filled and when the ambush comes around, the entire ambush will actually be dispersed amont the other 7, since the tank is at the aggroe limit.

I suggest you learn to hover and max your range defense and do the best you can to have as high AOE defense as well, so when the ambush hits, you at least have a chance to tell which mobs have your number and do something about it before the spam mez from them incapacitates you.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

It depnds on what AT type I am playing, if I am in a melee, I have little reason to skip any content. But if I am playing a support caste, then I have all kinds of reasons to avoid certain content:

1. Carny is avoided due to excessive mez, and lack of effective protections versus it.
2. Any escort mission, they force me to turn off my stealth in order to escort the victim thru many ambushes. Sadly many of my powers that gives me defense, also gives me stealth, so I have to turn-off the few defensive powers I have, that is like asking a tank to detoggle their resistances...
3. Jocasta missions, filled with knives of artemis, they deploy way too many caltrops and these stay up for way too long too. They are not challenge, they are just boring player time sinks. Also look at reason 2.
4, Spoon fed missions, where you have to do one target at time for another target to activate. All too often, you go find a person to be told destroy the artifact you walked by at the entrance of the map, then you destroy it and have to go back to the person at the far end of the map again. Maybe this is fun, if your IQ is measured in the double digits.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I have the last sound blaster drivers for my computer sound card, but still during high intensity environments such as RWZ mothership and Hami raids. I will enivitably suffer a sound card crash.

I am using the latest creative labs drivers, which I updated as a result of the continual sound crashing during such events.

I even run pc performance tuners, ensure all my dlls, and what not are up to date, and what not.

Yet, I am suffering from those annoying sound crashes.

Are there any sound card reset commands in the game, I know there are video graphic reset commands.

Is there a way to turn sound to off within the game? As opposed to thru my bios, etc. Or perhaps reduce the sound performance to avoid whaever is precipitating the crash? This problem started after I19 incidentally.

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: I have no problems with normal team sizes or TFs, even ITF with its built in lag does not present me with a sound crash issue.

Mmm...

I will make a stand and simply say I oppose Sister and lowbie TFs being part of WST.

I understand that, maybe, just maybe, WST is not only about Incarnate; and in fact it may be only a temporary measure to acquire notices of the well until I20 kicks in.

But as of now, Notices of the Well is a key ingredient for level 50s progessing through out the incanate system, and they can only be acquired via the WST.

Now we can play coy all we want, but lets face some obvious observables:

1. Level 50s progressing in the incarnate system: Needs Notices of the Wells.
2. Level 50s progressing in the incarnate system: Needs lots of shards, and I mean lots!

Why would a level 50 intent in doing the new incarnate material, have any interest in doing lowbie material?

Again we can play coy in this and come up with some lame excuses, but frankly, there is no good reason to do this from an incarnate progression perspective. Today with my 36 level 50 alts, I have no use for low level material, I need shards, shards, shards, and more shards.

As Wendy said, if we take a level 50 incarnate minded player and force him into Sister, what you think that player is gonna do?

"Duh, lets kill all mobs, because some whinny lowbie wants exp"

No, they are going to device and practice the most expedient way to complete a very boring TF to get the only thing of value from it: Notice of the well.

I have expressed my concern in other threads about mixing 50s with lowbies in TFs, and the week of Sis its going to get very very ugly.

The problem is that 2 very different set of goal minded people are going to collide head to head, I predict lasting enmities between players is going to occur from this.

What are the 2 main set of goal minded people?

The first, the obvious, lowbies using the TF to get exp and level. To these folk, nothing but a kill all mobs would be acceptable, plain an simple.

The second, and just as obvious, are level 50s hunting for Notices. To this folk, doing anything beyond what minimally is needed would be unacceptable.

Now I do point the finger at the developers for being "irresponsible" enough to set a clear situation "Sister TF" where these two frames of mind are guaranteed to collide.

Sheesh, and I thought this game was about having fun...

Stormy

Ps: Fortunately by the time Sister comes around I would have accumulated sufficient notices, to not need to bother with Sister at all! After all I need to gain lots of shards from 50s content. Frankly, Sister is plainly a 100% waste of time. Incidentally, does Sister drop any decent recipes? Certainly no chance for purples...

Mmm...

While I agree that loot should be randomly generated, I still don't believe it should be randomly distributed, at least not entirely.

Have any of you played D&D, the paper and pencil version?

I have, and I often GM it (every Sat night we actually get together and still play, face to face, go figure a real semi social life, giggles)

When we group, ya we have our fighter, cleric, mage and thief so we have all bases covered. When loot is gained from something, and a magic wand drops, do we randomly roll to see who gets it? The answer is no, we give it to the mage who actually could use it. When a magic sword drops, do we randomly roll for it? No, we give it to the fighter, who could use it best. When we get gold, do we randomly roll for it and give it all to the winner? No, we equally distribute it. If we get an item no one can use, we sell it, and the money is equally distributed.

Get the drift?

Note: It could be argued, that the wand was more valuable than the sword, and thus the fighter got shafted and the rest of the team got nothing for their efforts. Very true, but a responsible GM ensures that there is a variety of loot so all can get something equivalent over that night's scenario. In the case of CoX that level of loot value disparity does not exist, fortunately, so this is not a greed issue.

So in City of Heroes, its ok to get loot randomly generated, but come-on, it does not have to be randomly assigned, that is simply dumb. Other games such as DAOC has options to allow for even distribution of loot to occur, so why not CoX?

CoX loot is pretty well defined, thus its easy to track and distribute. Loot can be shards, 4 types of recipes, 3 types of ingredients, etc. Each type of loot can be tracked by event and TF series. And yes who gets what first, can be random, but they get no seconds of that particular loot until all others get their share. Once we are ready for seconds, its random again to find who is the new first receiver. I can't see how this exploitable, either, if you can, please explain.

How sophisticated this distribution system, I suggest above can actually be variable, lots of considerations such as player x got a drop, say a white recipe. A second drop falls, its a yellow ingredient. The question is, do we allow player one to compete for the yellow ingredient, or do we count him out, so that all 8 players have gotten something at least, before a player can have a seond drop of anything? Of course had the second drop been another white recipe, he would have been counted out, do note that had it been a yellow recipe, he would not been counted out since it was not a white recipe thus a different class of loot, yet the consideration should that player be allwoed to receive a second drop, despite not all other team members have received a drop yet?

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

I think its the so called random number generator is simply peeing in your punch.

For the past three days, I been playing my alts with 3rd tier slotted Alphas, in those 3 days I did 15 TFs, about 7 were kill alls, 5 were grind to target, but not kill all, 3 were fast versions. Amazingly I had a streak of 15 TFs in a row where I only received 1 Shard. The streak was broken on TF 16 (Kahn) which was done in a grind to target manner, and received no shards at all; at the time I was on my blaster and was AOEg like a madwoman in steroids. Thus my steak of 15 Tfs in a row with a single drop was broken, for the worst. Needless to say, I was fuming! On the next TF I did, an LGTF I received 9 shards. While that was plesantly nice, lets see what the stats tallied:

16 TFs made me 24 shards, so I averaged slightly less than 2 shards per TF, a miserable drop rate per TF loot share.

I been counting how many shards drops per TF by asking players for their tallies, and I seeing rates between 22 and 34 shards per TF, the variance has much to do with a speed versus kill all, amazingly a kill all does not yield that much more to my great surprise. It seems as a generality that a speed yields sufficient shards to award each player about 3 shards per tf, while a kill all raises that value to 4 per player. In my opinion, the problem is how the loot gets distributed where the results gets askewed. Obviously when a player gets "lucky" they are doing so at the expense of another, zero sum gain. So if the true and fair average is 3 per player and one player receives 9 shards, we can see that at least 2 players could wind up "randomly fair" not receiving a single shard for their effort. An aberration and very ugly thing to happen. Frankly theer has to be a better way to distribute loot, I have no issue with loot being randomly generated, I do have an issue with loot being solely randomly distributed. A fairer way to distribute shards is to randomly generate who receives the first shard, once that person receives a shard, they are not eligeable to receive another until all other team members have received their one. You could continue being random on who gets 2nd, 3rd, etc shards. Once all 8 have recived their goodies, you could go random again to see who of the 8 gets another first, etc.

So I don't believe its the shard drop rate, I believe its the loot distribution system that is at fault and giving you an erroneous perception.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

I like the concept of the weekly special TF, but I expected it to be level 50 material TFs not a lowbie Sister TF, that is plainly wrong, especially when there are other level 50 TF material available!

I worked hard to get my incarnate powers, I want to use them!

I am working on more of alts to go up the ladder, so I need to maximize my opportunity to get shards. Frankly Sister is a waste of time from a shard garnering perspective, and its one of the most boring and tedius TFs in the game to boot. Perhaps that is why it was selected over ITF, Apex, and Tin Man which also happens to be co-op TFs.

If a patch that allows to get shards is in the way, Sister as a strike TF should be postponed to "after" the patch is in place! There "are" other level 50 TFs that can and should be done before doing lowbie material.

If the devs noticed the drastic reduction of players doing low level content, and are trying to resurrect these truly not worth doing TFs, they should simply allow shards and materials to be purchased with merits, I would suggest 1 shard for 14 merits each.

Why 1 shard = 14 merits, how do I come with such an offer?

Well ITF is a 26 merit TF, if completed you can get a nictus component. Since a component by the game's built-in own conversion system takes 4 shards to get you any component, since ITF gives you a component then 26 merits should provide you 4 shards. And the calculated cost in merits for a single shard would be 26/4=6.5 or 7 merits per shard. But this value is not a fair one, for you are not getting 4 shards you could do anything you want with, its kinda pre-set. So frankly the value should be between 1 and 4 shards, say 2 for fairness. Thus 26/2=13 merits per shard.

A second benchmark, Hami raid, it yields 4 shards or 56 merits, since these are 4 true shards, the cost should be 56/4=14 merits.

Now you know how I figured 14 merits buys one shard.

Another conversion since an Alignment Merit is roughly worth 125 merits, it should convert to 125 merits/14 per shard = 8.92 or 9 Shards per A-merit.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

I just got about every flavor of MM one could conceive, and the issue of pets getting stuck at the door, not going thru a portal with you in CoT maps can be truly irritating.

As an MM, I just sit out any CoT underground city maps, my pets are a liability to the team, for after the first tp or portal trip, they seem to purposely split up in as many random directions and garner as much aggroe the game would allow 7 pets to bring to your team and you.

In some instances such as my Dark/Necro MM, my Dark powers are plenty good for me to go at it without my pets, so I do go in CoT underground city maps and help the team, and do so effectively. But there are many other combos that are pet intensive and thus being petless in that case would turn the MM into a liability to the team.

The left at entrance of a zone or mission issue, I use "/releasepets" that command has served me quite well and reliably. But the pet stuck thing can be a very ugly thing for an MM, at times we entered missions where a patrol is happily waiting for us and they attack us as we phase in and we are totally helpless since our GUI can not interact with the game just yet. Then under attack, my stuck pets do nothing as I am getting pelted and spam mezzed. Its rare to survive one of these scenarios, because you have to release the pets which you can't do while mezzed, and then after you released them, you have to resummon them and buff them if possible.

I believe the idea of you zoning in an out with your pets was to show consideration to the team by not having to wait for pet summoning, and for more realistic protection of the MM upon entering or leaving a mission.

Will these bugs get fixed?

Frankly, I really, really doubt it, for they have 2 things going against it:

1. There are work arounds, they may be clumsy and annoying, but there are work arounds. Thus reducing the priority or need to correct.

2. Well its red side, enough said.

The only suggestion, I can make to aleviate your pain is to develop your alt were it can be somewhat effective with out pets, so you have a fall back position in case of emergencies. With the introduction of IO sets and temp powers, you could surprise yourself on how good a fall back capability you actually can achieve.

Stormy

Mmm...

I tend to agree, debt protection as a multiple IO benefit is a waste of a slot.

Not sure returning debt to its original glory to be a good thing, especially when the game's lethality towards support ATs has increased so much. I guess to some, this will add to the challenge...

I think as a whole, the game really needs to re-look at the inter-AT balance, and then at IO sets themselves to faithfully serve the need of each AT. As a poster commented, there is too much defense in the game, and to an extent that is right. But on the other hand from a support AT perspective there is too much mez out there too, and with the game's sense of challenge is essentially making the support AT's mitigation of mez powers increasingly less reliable; the increase of on the spot ambushes; and the increase of ranged and area mez by mobs, has pretty much forced many a player to seek higher defense levels to mitigate the continued erosion of the performance ability of their conditional protections.

So while a dev may want to decrease defense in the game, a sense of balance and fairness to all ATs is being lost in the process, if no compensation is made.

I am getting to the point to believe, the game needs a major rebalance, kinda like the comic books did some time ago.

A real good examination on how the group inter-dynamics should really work, where all classes are just as dependent on each other, and not some more than others, would be highly desirable; but I fear it may result with melee getting nurfed substantially and not what I would want, by far.

I feel Tankers of all ATs are the most proficient class for playability, they have sufficient damage to get the job done, and protections to go with it. They can buff, rez, heal themselves as well. In short a very well balanced AT in my opinion. Proof of the pudding is, they can go on and solo +4/x8/Y/Y, the hallmark of exceptionally good design.

Now the challenge is, and always has been, how you get the other classes to approximate the +4/x8/Y/Y performance standard of the Tanker? And I mean with the depth and consistency that Tankers have, I know each class has possibly an exception that could meet the +4/x8/Y/Y standard, but usually is a very specific design for a very specific foe, as opposed of a tanker just about being to handle just about any foe out there (this means there are few choice foes that are the bain of tankers, but these are few and rare).

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

Very illuminating posts in most cases...

I like the idea of a customizable tough power, or a pool all of its own for resistances, It will help the ultra-squishies become vey squishie instead, and the melee who already enjoy excellent resistances in most areas to round themselves even better. After all the fear of "ubber" protected melee can be easily solved by implementing resistance caps just as defense is capped. I believe, but uncertain, that resistance itself is already capped to 90% for melee right? But the real problem melee has is the availability of IO sets that actually boost resistance, thus achieving resistance cap is not likely to occur, am I wrong in my observation?

Having a versatile Tough pool, would make sense in all accounts to be there for capability rounding purposes and character concept integration; which is not limited to just melee. I frankly have a real problem with PSI Defenders having no resistances to mez in particular psi based mez attacks. While I can understand a psi defender being stunned cause you punched them on the face is one thing, but a rikti looks at you in an ugly manner and you go "duh" is another thing in its entirety. To me there is nothing more ironic than a mind controller being so easily mezzed by just about anything by mobs using the Controller's tool of the trade. But then I am just a role-player having a problem with rule implementation simply not making good sense, despite that there is a limited legimitate playability justification.

With the advents of IOs and now Alphas the entire balance of Damage Resistance, Defense, Damage Dealing, Mez dealing, and Mez Ressistance might be worth while re-examining and re-balanced.

For instance I can see a tank being very very damage resistant, but I can not see them being very very agile and thus very hard to hit. In contrast I can see a Scrapper being very agile and thus very very hard to hit, but not nearly as damage resistant as a Tank.

When we compare ranged vs melee, we have a sacrifice of armor for gun power. The less damage resistance you have, the more damage you get to have. Kinda like the old naval triad of choices between armor, guns, and speed. A blaster, being basically void of resistances should have some awesome guns, really awesome guns! Not sure they are that awesome for their current nakedness, something in dare need of a re-look. After all a Blaster survival depends on them defeating thier target before the target takes them down.
Should a Blaster's damage be reduced if given defense, absolutely, but one should also factor that defense is not infallible like sheer damage resistance "is".

I really can't undersand the balance with defenders, they have no resistances to speak off in general, despite a few configurations can have some, and not much for defenses as well. Their holds are ok but usually single target, and their debuffs takes time to accumulate; yet they have the lowest damage base ability of all ATs, how was this sense of balance determined? It appears out of whack to me. It would seem to me the damage a defender does should be definetely superior to a tank, and competitive with a Scrapper, who has superior damage resistance, defense and has mez protection which the defender entirely lacks as a whole.

I just feel, that the ATs need to be rebalanced a bit, not nurfed by any means, but some ATs may need upgrading to level the playing field.

Stormy

Hi:

I just unlocked my tier 3 alpha, and it claims I am now level 51 of sorts, is there a way to see that I am 51sh, and to also see if others are 51sh as well?

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

Interesting idea, but it may not be too practical if you can only choose 1 version of it. It is a different beast all together if you could choose multiple ones.

I am lead to believe that S/L attacks are the greatest damage dealers, thus Tough versus this forms of attack is the most beneficial manifestation. You in fact get the best bang for your money by the standard configuration.

But being able to acquire other forms of toughness would be great to add resistance in other areas, you should be able to get toughness for any form of damage to include psionic and toxic, it would lend itself to better character concept creation and game immersion. I could see a radiation defender, whose origin could be actually toxic, would have greater resistances towards her source of power. I would think a fire elemental being resistant to fire to be a natural thing...

Very interesting concept

Stormy

Power Supression, I love it!

It stops some players from using their powers to show off or simply harrass other players trying to make decisions on what to buy and how much to pay for.

I find players coming into the auction house blowing themselves up, deploying ligning storms, stomping the ground to be rude behavior and childish at best.

I sincerely wish power suppresion was also done at WW and BM as well.

But I do agree, power suppresion should not de-toggle you, just suppress the power graphic and sound effects. So when you leave the store you are at 100% and don't have to go thru the process of re-toggling...

Stormy

Mmm...

Be careful here. but there is great truth on the melee ranged blasters on going smash/lethal defense, but it is difficult for some blaster mixes to soft cap smash/lethal for many of the primary sets do not really lend themselves to get slotted with IO sets that give you reasonably good smash/lethal defense. But if your set allows for smash/lethal to soft cap, you may want to go this route as well for ranged too.

Why? soft cap smash/lethal for ranged blasters?

It is a known fact in this game, an exploit in my opinion, that all attacks are not truly pure in their damage forms. That is an energy blaster, does not solely do energy damage, sadly they do a combo of damage types usually it will be a base damage form (energy) plus either lethal or smashing, but no matter what, it will be smashing or lethal. When the game check for your defense value, it looks at the damage types, say Energy and Smashing; it then looks at your 2 defensive values accordingly and uses the highest of either for the to hit determination, so if you are high defense leveled on lethal and smash, you are just about covered against any form of attack coming at you. There are a few exceptions mostly on the Rikti side where some attacks are neither positional or lethal/smash and can be very painful for those in the receiving end.

Sadly capping smash/defense is very difficult for most blaster combos, and thus if you go ranged you may want to work on your positionals instead.

But if you are ranged type, do not solely defend against ranged, you got to also safeguard against AOE type of ttacks as well, quite a great deal of mob secondary mez effects are AOE. A mezzed blaster is not very impressive...

Sadly trying to def cap a Blaster in 2 positionals is nearly impossible, but you can do a reasonably good job. I have little difficulty def capping range, and with some effort you can attain 30% AOE def as well. You could do the opposite just as easily, soft capping (45%) AOE and bringing range to 30%.

Since AOE tends to be low damage, and you can still fight while mezzed, I tend to give it less of a priority to the hard hitting ranged attacks.

Also if you do go ranged, the flight pool "Hover" is your friend, never land, minimize your opposition's chances to engage with melee attacks. Also if you want to be able to keep contro of your character as much as possible, make sure you have MAG 12 knockback protection! Hover can take a Karma KPB!, pick up Fightin Pool's Tough and you can pick up Steadfast KBP; both easy rolls on bronze low level AE ticket exchanges. To get to the MAG 12, it can get a bit sporting or costly. If you want protections at very low levels, well hover comes at 6th, but you can always purchase a Blessing of the Zephyr and put it on your flight at level 14. You could wait a bit, and put another steadfast KBP on your epic armor as well.

An important tactic against flying opponents such as Hero-1, hover but always strafe left and right, its a shoot, strafe, shoot, strafe, etc. You got to minimize Hero-1s ability to close the range and melee you; if he does, you are toast.

Hope this helps you have a better gaming experience

Stormy

Mmm....

I can see where all servers could possibly have "empty like" periods of times in which teaming is difficult to achieve, and some days are harder than others such as Mondays and Wednesdays for some unknown reason. The times I find more difficult to team with is early in the morning but as the day progresses the server population usually increases.

A particular important thing you must do to overcome the "desolate" feel you may be experiencing is the joining of server wide chat channels, such as BMT of Champions or Champions United at the Champions server for instance. I know each server has such over-arching chat channels.

Once you join some of these channels, you will be surprised of how much company you do have even during the early hours of the morning, and that in fact the servers are not as desolate as you may think they are.

Another very important method to find steady company is joining a large SG/VG that is very active, but more importantly with lots of Coalition friends! More so than the SG/VG membership for grouping, is the coalition grouping opportunities which can easily rival or out match the customary channel wide chat groups.

I find in the early hours in the morning, when teaming can be a bit challenging to be an excellent time to catch up with logistics, that is craft IOs, do tips, move influence around, work on base, play the market, document my alt's status for badges, abilities, etc.

I hope these suggestions helps you with your gaming experience

Stormy